Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Illinois

Re: Trust vs will

My first and most important advice to you is to have an attorney review the documents that you reference in your question. Only such a review of the two documents, together with information regarding title to the assets he owned at the time of his death can give accurate answers to your questions.

With that in mind, a will only governs the distribution of the assets that are titled in the name of a person at the time of his death. If there were assets titled in the name of the trust, then the trust document governs the distributions.

You don't say anything about how the assets were titled, so if you don't know you have to find out.

Sometimes people will have a trust document drafted, but they never put assets into it. If that's the case, then what the trust says about beneficiaries wouldn't matter, UNLESS, the will says something about the trust.

Many times the will and the trust are drafted at the same time and one will make reference to the other and vice versa. That's why its very important to have an attorney review ALL of the documents at the same time.

If you are an interested party to the estate (an heir or a beneficiary(legatee)), then you have the power to open a probate estate to find out the answers to these questions even if the executor is not willing to share the documents with you voluntarily.

Good luck to you - but please seek legal advice. This is a complicated issue.